Combining Economic Reasoning with Environmental Issues

COMBINING ECONOMIC REASONING WITH ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES:

A STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Robert W. Reinke, University of South Dakota

Donald R. Wentworth, Pacific Lutheran University

Introduction:

Environmentalism today has many of the characteristics of a popular religion combined with features of a high school debate topic. It relies on beliefs, faith, emotion and doomsday warnings on the one hand, and justifies a myriad of points of view with half truths, unintelligible statistics, questionable research results, and ‘expert’ testimony on the other. For this reason, planning curriculum and teaching students about environmental economics presents some unique problems that an instructor should anticipate before proceeding with the task of teaching the course. This paper will focus on two problems that must be overcome, or at least understood before successful teaching and learning are to occur. The solutions to these problems become more apparent when an economic reasoning model is incorporated into the classroom environment.

Two Problems:

Two serious obstacles to teaching environmental economics are 1) information overload and 2) deeply held inaccurate or incomplete beliefs. The first problem deals with the intellectual environment in the modern world. It is very productive and provides information quickly, easily and efficiently. The ability to obtain information is unparalleled in human history. Information on resource management and environmental issues is being generated faster than the greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists receive strong support for research in the resource management and environmental issues’ area, and organizations justify their existence by providing environmental information. Political leaders, news media and educators continue to develop and disseminate information on the environment. How people choose to read, hear, remember and understand environmental information is a serious intellectual problem which is rarely addressed. Without consideration, educational efforts in this area of study may simply become a waste of time.

The information age has created an interesting irony. People have the potential to know more about almost anything today than ever before in history. However, the result of this information availability is often frustration and refusal to deal with it. After all, it is impossible to take in and process all this information so why try? In addition, the ease of information creation and dissemination has allowed people to see that there is supporting information on just about any opinion one holds. How do people react? Some choose to be rationally ignorant. Others become cynical and believe nothing. Others become paralyzed in action while they attempt to gather and process the information. (Paul, 1992)

The problem becomes obvious when an example of deforestation is chosen to be discussed in class. One textbook bemoans the state of deforestation within the United States (Mansfield, 1995), while at the same time a research study demonstrates the results that ‘….net tree growth in the U.S. is consistently out pacing tree harvest, resulting in the steady increase in the number of wooded acres in the U.S.’ (Bast, 1994) Abundant information, contradictory results and little structure on how to deal with the problem creates a frustrated student. Is it possible both statements are right and wrong?

Deeply Held Inaccurate Beliefs

The environment has been a fashionable popular topic for 25 years. The first Earth Day took place in 1970. Adults and children have already learned many things they no longer question or are willing to reconsider. These conclusions have become beliefs held on faith and they are unchallengeable by evidence although much contradictory evidence exists. An example is that people think that the environment is in worst shape now relative to anytime in our history. Evidence to the contrary is seen as a challenge and it brings a strong negative reaction of denial. The reaction is much like the Roman Catholic Church requiring Galileo to recant his discovery that the world is not the center of the universe. Instructors must find a way to teach so these beliefs can be reexamined without encountering the emotional denial that usually accompanies such intellectual confrontations with beliefs. The best teacher and materials have a low probability of success when a denial that creates such high barriers to intellectual pursuit exists.

This difficult information age cannot be allowed to create close minded, anti-information people, particularly among the young. Sometimes needs to be done to assist these young people in schools and society in general to accept the information overload challenge and develop requisite skills to successfully cope. Coping should include the following:

- View information as important to the thinking process

- View information as needing to be reviewed, verified and interpreted

- View information as evidence which is needed to support one’s beliefs

- View information as changing over time

- View information processing as a costly process with corresponding benefits

- View oneself as capable of acceptable levels of information analysis

Economic thinking about environmental information will help in meeting these coping objectives.

Economic Reasoning about Environmental Topics

The process of reasoning about any subject before knowledge is accepted and opinions formed seem to be a critical component of learning. The ability to ask questions, challenge and stay open to new or emerging information is critical. Consequently, the teaching of reasoning or critical thinking is an important objective of educators. (Wentworth, 1986) For the purpose of this article a foundation definition of critical thinking is the intellectual disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing and / or evaluating information gathering from, or generated by observation, experience, reflection, seasoning or communication, as a guide to belief and actions (Scriven & Paul, National Council on Excellence in Critical Thinking, 1992)

A careful review of this definition suggests that it has many things in common with what economists do and how they think. Economics, after all, is the behavioral science that focuses on individual choice and the analysis of choice. It employs deductive reasoning based on basic assumptions to draw inference to explain actual occurrences. (Wentworth, 1990) It is very similar to the technique employed by Sherlock Holmes in the famous detective novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This method of thinking helps analyze clues, solves problems, and facilitates predictions. Therefore, economic reasoning can be an integral part of the critical thinking process used to study environmental issues. Siegfried, et. al. (1991) suggests that students of economics when properly taught will possess many of the critical thinking skills required to deal with information overload, respecting evidence over belief, predicting behavior, and solving problems of many types including environmental.

Establishing The Foundation for Economic Reasoning

People often resist change and the environmental topic is no exception. The new ideas relating to how and what to teach about the environment are not well understood and frankly yield results that many people (often teachers) find unacceptable. Much of this unconformity to what we would like to see or believe emanates from the connection of environmentalism to economic principles. Before teachers can teach and students can learn about economic reasoning, they need to be well versed in, if not accepting of, the basic principles and theories that establish the foundation of reasoning model. (VanSickle, 1992)

The people in the world are going through a ‘gut wrenching’ experience. They are being forced to accept a basic principle of life which for many (if not all) is very difficult. The principle is scarcity – scarcity of productive resources relative to the wants and needs of society’s members. Simply, we can’t have it all.

Accepting this principle is easy, for intuitively, it makes sense. We know deep down that we are never really satisfied and if possible we want more goods, services, or good feelings (physiological rewards) than less. We also accept the fact that the planet earth is a contained space so resources are limited or finite.

Acting upon the principle of scarcity is a different matter. Scarcity forces choice. Given the fact we can’t have it all, decisions must be made regarding what we want and what we refuse. There are no costless decisions. From the environmental perspective, it means we can’t save all species of living things, we can’t keep all the virgin forests, we can’t have a pollution free environment, without experiencing a number of negative consequences.

The discipline of economics suggests that the proper way of contending with this condition is to weigh respective costs and benefits of each possible decision and select the one(s) with the best ration of costs to benefits. This is easily stated and difficult to implement. Costs and benefits vary among people. Some people love majesty of a gigantic redwood tree and others love to sit on their redwood deck enjoying the sunset. Incentives and rewards drive cost benefit decisions and every individual seems to have different values. It is no surprise that conflict evolves from this condition particularly when one understands that individual decisions often effect many people. Called externalities, these third party effects can either positively or negatively impact the lives the actual decision maker doesn’t even know. The smoker in the booth next to yours at the restaurant is shortening your life, making you more receptive to asbestos induced cancer, and just uncomfortable. He or she doesn’t know you and probably doesn’t even realize what negative things they are imposing upon you. One reason for this is you don’t own the air any more than the smoker does.

A classic example of negative environmental impact caused by poorly defined property rights is the TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS. In old England, everyone who lived in a particular area had the right to graze their sheep or cows on the commons. This was ‘free’ land for use by all. This idea worked fine as long as there were few villagers and the ability of the commons to sustain grazing exceeded the number of animals. This changed when the village grew and more people used the land. Individual farmers viewed the benefit from the land and not the cost. If he added another animal to the commons he would benefit from more milk or meat. In addition, if he didn’t add another animal and gain the benefit someone else would. The result was overgrazed commons and eventual ruin. This would not have occurred if the grazing land was privately owned.

Ownership becomes an important variable in understanding environmental issues and individual societal decision making. In economics, many decisions are made with the help of markets; a place where buyers and sellers conduct business or exchange goods and services. Ownership is key to this activity for both the buyers and sellers can use cost and benefit analysis to make a decision that is best for them. When properly done and externalities are considered, decisions reflect the wants of third parties as well. Ownership would have allowed farmers that value the grazing of animals the most the right to graze or would impose a higher cost on the smokers to pay for effective exhaust fans of separate smoking areas.

Many countries are currently taking the principles of economics and attempting to employ them in their decision making about the environment. Private property rights are a concept receiving much attention. Current policy is now overturning past practice and is letting the buying and selling of ownership reflect the values people place on environmental quality. Just as deer hunting licenses exchange ownership of venison from governments to individuals, permits to pollute the air or water can also be bought and sold in some cases. From an economics point of view, this adds a cost to the polluting activity and cost benefit decisions will be made pertaining to this activity. Firms who have a high cost of pollution cleanup (need a lot of resources to do the job) will buy permits from those who have lower costs in terms of resources needed. The result will be an ‘acceptable’ level of pollution being obtained with fewer resources used. This frees these resources to be used for other purposes.

When property rights are not considered the cost and benefit decision making system breaks down as seen in the commons example. Contemporary cases also exist. When the government officials could reduce the ownership rights of Gaston Roberge, a Boston man who wanted to sell his empty 2.8 acre lot in Old Orchard Beach, by declaring the parcel a wetland protected area under the clean water act, it in effect, kept Mr. Roberge from gaining benefits from is property and cost the government little for making the decision.

This ability to take away private property benefits claiming environmental protection with little costs generates an interesting result. As discussed earlier, when costs and benefits are difficult to determine or do not reflect the real value of society, decisions will be less than optimal from an economic standpoint. In the case of Mr. Roberge, government officials viewed protecting Old Orchard Beach as an inexpensive thing to do so they protected an area that perhaps did not need protecting or shouldn’t have been protected if the real cost of protecting it was experienced. If the government officials would have known that they would have had to pay $338,000 eight years later by order of the Justice Department for violating his Fifth Amendment rights to just compensation, they may have made a different decision. It looks as if even the world governments can’t even have it all when economic principles establish the rules of thinking.

Basic premises of economics have broad application in relation to reasoning about social issues as well. Specifically, the principles of scarcity, choice, cost, incentives, marginalism, utility and interdependence are useful tools for studying about the environment. Combining the reasoning process derived from the conceptual tools of economics with the tools themselves creates a useful perspective or structure for thought. (Wentworth, 1987) A useful guide for reasoning about environmental issues follows. The guide is adapted from the Handy Dandy Guide described in Capstone: The Nation’s Economics Course, Reinke, et. al (1989) and Eco-Sanity, Bart, et. al. (1994).

The Useful Guide to Environmental Reasoning

1. Environmental problems result from choices made by people. Pollution, resource depletion and other environmental problems come as a result of the choices made by individuals. Abstractions like governments and corporations do not make decisions. Individuals within these organizations make choices for the organization. Therefore, to solve environmental problems, policies must help people make different choices which are more environmentally friendly. “I had no choice,” is not an acceptable response to environmental problem solving.

1. Incentives influence choices. Environmental policies that reward environmentally friendly behavior and/or reduce the cost of environmentally friendly behavior will be more successful. Currently many laws unintentionally increase the cost of individuals to be more environmentally friendly.

1. Efficient solutions to environmental problems are preferable to inefficient solutions. It is costly to correct environmental problems. Correction programs must strive to reduce these costs as much as possible. Inefficient solutions waste resources which mean other problems must be unnecessarily neglected.

1. Markets can contribute positive solutions to environmental problems. In markets, people respond to incentives to voluntarily improve their circumstances. They respond to positive financial incentives, avoid high costs and attempt to preserve valuable resources. This market process can also help environmental policies have a greater opportunity to b successful.

1. Private property ownership can contribute to environmental solutions. People tend to take care of those resources they own because they get the rewards from that ownership and they are held responsible for the use of those resources. Many problems of abuse in the environment come from lack of ownership because no one is rewarded for preserving the environmentally sensitive species or area.

1. You can’t do just one thing. All choices dealing with environmental issues have secondary effects. The interdependency in both the environment and the economy make separate solutions to each problem impossible. Good problem solvers consider not only the obvious things they are trying to correct but also the unintended secondary consequences.

This useful guide is presented in the spirit of Kenneth Boulding’s remark that people acquired knowledge by the systematic discarding of information. A short guide to the important reasoning premises in environmental economics can help students choose what information to use, how to reexamine their current beliefs and learn not to be taken in by every option presented to them. Examples of the use of the guide follow:

Endangered Species Issue

The spotted owl is on the endangered species list. It apparently requires old growth timber for nesting and reproduction purposes. Let’s use the Useful Guide to sort through some of the issues with this controversy.

1. Choice. The owl habitat is altered by loggers who choose to cut and sell the timber but many other choices by other people influence the logger’s behavior. Anyone who wants to use wood to build a home, a boat, a deck, a garage or use paper is encouraging the use of trees for something other than owl habitat. We have a conflict here because of the scarcity of resources. There are not enough old growth trees to satisfy both consumer requirements and owl habitat.

1. Incentives. The logger has no incentive to save the owl habitat. They earn income to support families by satisfying consumers rather than owls. If the incentives were changed to reward loggers with income for protecting owls they would be very willing to do that.

1. Efficient. Owls do not need thousands of acres to protect their habitat, yet, to be careful, government policy makers force loggers to stay several miles away from the owl’s nest. This policy required the loggers to unnecessarily lost income. It was a waste of resources that served neither the public, the logger, nor the owl well. An attempt to minimize the cost to be efficient, would have made the loggers much les hostile toward the owl and may have helped keep more habitat available to the owl.

1. Markets. Rights to spotted owl habitats could have been bought and sold. If supporters wanted to help the spotted owl they could have purchased the land or the logging rights from the loggers for a fair price. This solution would have allowed both groups to achieve their goals.

1. Private Property. If the owl supporters had owned the owl habitat there would have been no threat to the spotted owl. Because the land is mostly public land which is to be used by everyone, there is a serious conflict between which group should be allowed the benefits but neither group wants to assume responsibilities.

1. Secondary Consequences. Owl habitat protection did not just help the owls. It also caused loggers to lose income, some to lose jobs. Lumber prices rose making it more difficult for people to own their own home or to use lumber in a variety of ways. It put off limits much public land to hikers and outdoor recreationalists. Most of the consequences were never considered when the protection policy was begun. Some of them could have been avoided if people had anticipated the secondary effects better.

Using the USEFUL GUIDE TO ENVIRONMENTAL REASONING